Weekly Market Report - November 23, 2005

A Fresh Look at Sports Collectibles News

Upper Deck and Sunkist have teamed up to include a special series of hockey cards in bags of oranges sold in Canada. One card can be found in each specially marked bag from December 2005 through May 2006. The few of you who read this market report every week know that I like to put a sarcastic spin on real news. In this case, it's hard to believe that this is real news and that I didn't make it up. But seriously, I don't think I could have thought of this idea in a million years. Don't take that as a compliment Upper Deck, I don't think I would ever think to sell meatballs with diapers either, mostly because both ideas are equally ludicrous. Spend more time on working that Card Geek promotion (see below) and less time packaging your cards with hamburgers (see November 9 weekly report) and oranges. Oh, and get this, the cards are ORANGE and have a little Sunkist orange in hockey skates on them, how creative! [read article]

Beckett has partnered with Mark Cuban and numerous athletes to try to rejuvenate interest in card collecting with their 'Be a Card Geek' campaign. According to Beckett CEO Peter Gudmundsson "The idea behind the campaign is very simple. The ads say that no matter who you are, or how successful you become, if you're a sports fan, you probably collected cards as a kid and part of you wishes you still did." The ads will feature Cuban, Carmello Anthony, Mark Teixeira, Mike Madano and more. Topps, Upper Deck, Donruss, and all four major sports have thrown their support behind the campaign. Very cool. The hobby needs more of this and less including cards with fruit. Props to whomever thought of this, it should help grow the hobby immensely. [read article]

Todd McFarlane told Tuff Stuff that he will be limiting the number of chase figures offered in future McFarlane Sports Picks lines. McFarlane told Tuff Stuff "If we are making a figure at such a low rate because he isn't very popular anyway, then I don’t know if we need to make a chase figure for that player. If I am going to have a chase figure where there are only a handful of them, I would rather it be a cool Nolan Ryan figure, or A-Rod or Brett Favre - a high profile guy."

Agreed. I only wish they realized this sooner. One of the coolest things about the early NFL series is how hard it is to find a lot of the chase/variant figures. When McFarlane's caught on it seemed only logical to increase production, but in reality it only hurt the hobby by flooding it with product and therefore decreasing the value. This is similar to what happened to the card industry in the 90's. At least McFarlane corrected his mistake. Maybe now we can actually have some hard to find figures to chase after. It's the best part about being a collector - the feeling you get when you finally find that item you've been chasing down. Seeing 400 for sale on eBay for $5.99 just isn't the same.

[I don't have a link to this story. It came from the 11/22 issue of the Tuff Stuff newsletter. I tried to find the link on their website but it was down as I wrote this and for some reason they don't link to it in the newsletter, but trust me, it's there]

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!